


summer home sickness

by Azker



Category: Tokyo Ghoul
Genre: F/M, Implied Sexual Content, Not Canon Compliant, Post-Canon, Psychological Trauma, Rize Redemption
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-09
Updated: 2018-09-09
Packaged: 2019-07-10 02:31:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 970
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15939959
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Azker/pseuds/Azker
Summary: "You're real. This is real," Hide tells her, as many times as it takes for her to believe it. Even if he’s lying, she dares to think he wouldn’t break her brittle trust.Some time after Kaneki has pulled her from the depths of the dragon, Rize is still learning what it means to be a person.





	summer home sickness

What does sunshine taste like? Rize wouldn’t know. She doesn’t eat too much, these days, but that doesn’t stop her from wondering. If freedom has a distinct flavor on her palate—and she finds that it does—so, too, should this sunshine that’s rapidly consuming her.

When she’s kissing his skin, raking her hands through his tangles, and traveling down, down, toward his navel, she knows this is as close as she will ever come to heaven. He’s warm, so warm, his flesh pink and willing at the press of her lips. He smells like summer, like a hot breeze flooding her nose, like sweat and breath and tousled, sun-kissed hair. He grabs her like he wants her—but never too hard—and it feels like being swallowed by the gentlest tide.

And when she stops herself, fingers curling around the edges of his hip bones, it’s because she’s well aware gentleness is the last thing she deserves. Her smile pokes out from behind her plump, puckered lips, lingering over what she knows is his tender liver.

Oh, God, she still aches to taste the meat under her teeth.

“If it’s that hard to resist, just take a bite already.”

She winces, then flashes him a menacing look. “Nagachika. No.”

He chuckles, unfazed, and it never stops hurting just how much he trusts her. He says, “I know.”

“You don’t.”

“Wanna bet? I’ll take that one, Rize, easy-peasy.”

He doesn’t tear his eyes away from her. She feels some of that heat on her face now, creeping up from where her naked skin meets his, and she swears it’s actually burning. She fixes a glare at him and pushes herself up on his hips so that her breasts are right at his eye level, but he doesn’t lose face.

“You’re a fool, and I can’t stand you.”

He’s unimpressed. She despises it. “I’m not afraid of you, y’know.”

“That sort of thing will get you killed,” she says, irritated, as she bends to nibble at his earlobe. For good measure, she adds breathily, “And if you think I’m going to your funeral, you’re out of your mind.”

“Hey, now, I meant no disrespect. You just ain’t scary. You do have great tits, though.”

“Will you shut up? I’m angry with you.”

“Let me rephrase it,” he says, and tilts her chin up with his thumb. He looks into her eyes with a sincerity that gives her the urge to run. But she won’t. She already knows she can’t run from him, no matter how much she hates it, no matter how wrong it feels for something like her to be so close to the blinding, life-giving sun. “You won’t hurt me,” he tells her.

She makes a noise that sounds ill, her eyes softening slightly. Her stomach turns and churns. “And if you’re wrong?”

“Not likely. ‘Cause you love me.”

“Love?” she sputters, and can’t help but laugh, but it sounds strange and shrill even to her. “You’re so stupid! Ghouls can’t  _ love _ their food.”

“Well, what the hell do I know? I’d wager you think of me as more than food. Face it, Rize, you’ve had my dick in your mouth.”

“You’re not the first,” she reminds him.

“Noted. But I’m guessing I’m the first to live long enough to kiss and tell.”

“Gross, Hide.”

“Still love me.”

“Even if I had an appetite, I’ve lost it now.”

“There, ya see?” he says, and he’s showing her such a wide, toothy smile, she can hardly remember anyone looking more charming. “We make a great team. Every day, I help get you closer to total rehabilitation.”

She can’t hold herself back anymore, and her staunch armor finally cracks, revealing a genuine, infuriatingly  _ nervous _ chuckle. She’s falling onto him now, snorting and smiling and burrowing her face into his neck. She hates it and she loves it, the same way she’s always felt about summer. Too hot, too annoying to efficiently conceal decomposing body parts—yet playful and sunny and  _ bright _ .

“Oh, Nagachika-san,” she says, chortling, caught in a giggle fit, and he wraps his arms around her—snug, never too tightly, just how she needs.

“You’ve got no idea how soft you are when you look at me, do you?” he asks into the white roots of her hair, and she laughs louder, hiding from those eyes that she knows will hold too much truth for her to stomach.

“I don’t, and I don’t care to,” she trills pleasantly.

He stays with her and makes love to her as though he likes her, although she never understands why. She is still so far from feeling like flesh and blood, haunted by the version of herself who was siphoned through Ken Kaneki’s psyche, along with the other little  _ coffins _ her subconscious mind remains fused to to this day. Remnants of her once damned existence are scattered across this plane and countless metaphysical others—not living, not whole, but always, always regenerating.

Yet, things have changed.  _ She _ has changed, although she is still so far from beginning to put words to it. Despite being granted a second chance, even she can’t deny it’s a fate too gracious for someone who’s committed the acts that she has. And when he looks at her with that unmasked face, she wonders if he sees something she can’t possibly hope to live up to. His gaze isn’t one of hunger, like she once wished for it to be. It is refuge and warmth. It is the tip of the horizon, the promise of a new day that lingers behind those eyes. It terrifies and ignites her all at once.

She may never know how sunshine truly tastes, and maybe she doesn’t want to. Rize already knows how it feels when it lights up her every nerve.


End file.
